It shall be understood that various style of hats are marketed in a variety of ways. These hats are marketed through conventional retail outlets, and have also found a substantial market as promotional items. In the marketing of outerwear products, it is, of course, more economical to provide such products in a minimal numbers of sizes. Thus, economy of numbers may be achieved through utilization of hats of the multi-size variety.
In addition to typical marketing, various types of business entities provide such promotional items to employees and/or customers, and in these instances, the outer surface of the crown at a point above the visor may carry an emblem, or other indicia identifying the business entity. Because of the manner in which these products are marketed, it is, of course, desirable to utilize the products with minimal size variation requirements, hence the free-size hats become extremely desirable for the customer.
As is conventional, hats employ a crown portion to which a brim is secured to the forward edge of the crown and extends outwardly therefrom.
In the past, attempts have been made to provide free-size hat structures of the conventional hat style. Typically, the function of free-size is created through the utilization of an elastic band and of a stretchable fabric on the part of a crown and a brim. However, such hats cause a sense of oppression to the wearer since it uses a highly elastic band, especially when the wearer of a bigger head size wears the hat of a smaller crown size.
For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 5,822,799 teaches construction of a crown made in a big size, and a sweatband being stitched inside the crown at a level with a brim to provide a size-adjustment function as the wearer's head is received into the crown. A sweatband inside the said crown is pulled up in order to adjust to the wearer's head size. However, this does not provide a comfortable fitting to the wearers as the area in which the forehead of the wearer and the sweatband meets is higher than the area found in the typical configuration of the hat.